


Wax

by Tierfal



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wax

**Author's Note:**

> Silly Sarah Jane; you're the hottest ex-companion I know.

Sarah Jane bends her increasingly brittle body to sit down on the curb instead of the bench, the better to lay her hand on the cool metal panel that acts as the top of K-9's head.

She's had so many years to get used to it, but, somehow, the truth hasn't sunk in until now—you just can't lay claim to the Doctor.

He's too much to pin down, and that's the long, the short, and the sad of it. Nobody can hold onto him, so he'll never have anyone to hold.

But it's difficult to make yourself believe that, and it's nearly impossible to accept when he's sitting across from you at a table in a café, his new eyes bright in the bluish glow as he runs that mad screwdriver through the wiring of the only thing he gave you to remember him by.

And it's just—hard. It's hard to let go. It's hard not to reach for him when he's close enough to touch, even if you know you'd never be able to make him stay.

It's hard to resist the urge to step into the TARDIS and refuse to leave.

It's hard, because finding those wonders, seeing those worlds, feeling a thousand beautiful impossibilities prickling at your fingertips, and then _losing it all_ is like having your wings ripped from your shoulder-blades and being left to bleed.

And she did bleed, for a long time, but here he is, unmoved and unchanged. Here's Daedalus, last seen swooping low through a Barcelonan sunset like a shooting star. Now he's alighted in ordinary London, and for all that he's different, it's as if he's never left.

It's as if he never left her behind.

Sarah Jane sighs and musters up a smile. She's too old for it these days, anyway, all the fleeing in terror and laughing fit to fracture a rib when you somehow survive. She's done a lot of things, in the meantime, without any screwdriver to speak of, and she's proud of that. She's turned the Doctor's legend into a legacy.

She thinks of Rose Tyler, who is bright and vibrant and curious and alive. She thinks Rose really is a flower of Earth, and she's happy for her, cautiously, because Rose is a fitting, worthy successor, and Rose _needs_ this life. Sarah Jane can see that much just looking at her—just looking at her and the Doctor together.

She pats K-9's head and isn't sure what to hope for, because she doesn't know whether it's better to love him and be abandoned or to love him and be destroyed, and it will always, always come down to one of the two.


End file.
